CHA - Sunday January 30, 2011

Day 3 at the CHA started a bit later than the other days. We spent about 3 hours on a sightseeing tour of Hollywood, Beverly Hills and Santa Monica. We found the stars on Hollywood Boulevard, cruised up to Universal Studios, had a fascinating climb via a twisting residential “street” up to Mulholland Drive and exclaimed at the mansions of Beverly Hills.

We drove out to Santa Monica to have a coffee and look at the beach and pier. Driving is pretty easy on Sunday mornings before noon in LA!

Back at the conference, I dragged my husband onto the exhibition floor where one of the first things we saw was the display at Die Cuts With a View was a real show stopper!

My husband hung around with me for a while absorbing the size of the show, watched me fumble through a demo and took note of the number of men attending.  Then he left me watching Tim Holtz to find some lunch!

Marie Browning was at the Tombow booth doing demonstrations – she has a new book hot off the press using Tombow markers. I revealed my klutziness during the creation of my make-and-take by gluing the wrong side of my paper. Marie "punished" me by sticking the ruined piece of paper to my shirt, which I completely forgot about and wore for most of the rest of the day....!  Great projects, great lady!
With a little bit of practice, I could become pretty adapt at using these markers.

The next stop was back at the Ranger booth. Oh! Look who was there! I was surprised Tim Holtz didn’t have a million women around him!  But if there were any more around, you couldn't have seen what he was doing.

I had been wondering about the formulation of the new Distress stains and I heard it right from Tim that they were basically fluid Distress Inks and are easy to spread.  Mix them on the paper when they're wet, and/or layer them over dry layers.

So I watched as Mr. Holtz wove his magic and took pictures and a short video, then I had to run off to grab some lunch before my classes.




I tend to love little things and instantly fell in love with his little ATC hangers! Watch for them on the site soon!

In the afternoon, I had two hours of business seminars – one was protecting your brand and the other was marketing for manufacturers. The first one was presented by a lawyer and was loaded with information and the second one might require more review to access how useful it was. Asleep yet?

After the seminars, I had a meeting with an advertising person at the Creative Crafts Group, publishers of Creating Keepsakes, Paper Crafts and Stamp It! Magazines. When I first tried to get near their booth, it was impossible..... Something about prizes and cake and a lot of women...   Sounded like heaven to me!

My meeting did finally happen and the information has been tucked away. Anyone buy these magazines? If not, maybe I need to advertise there!

I had a quick little visit with Simply Renee, makers of these very cool organizing tools. I love my spinning organizer and wanted to see what else they had. (One of our cats thinks this organizer is quite interesting, too, but has been fairly reserved about torturing the items on it.) 

I particularly like their swinging wall arm and think it would be a great asset when you are working on mulitple projects - just hang the items for that project together and swing the arm out of the way while you finish another project.  How many of us have more than one project on the go at a time?   Guilty as charged, Your Honour!

My last stop was at Dreamweaver Stencils where I met the lovely and talented Lynell Harlow. Unfortunately she got away before I could snap her picture, but I did get several demos from her assistants and will be getting a selection of her new stencils.

Laura really wanted to demo the rooster for me - and I have to say, she did an amazing job with Glitter Ritz and double-sided tape!

Dreamweaver demonstrator Laura playing with Glitter Ritz!

Another products I watched a demo for is Stampee's Stamping Transfer Foils technique.  Pretty cool stuff!  You can read about it on the Craft Critique site here.

All in all, it was an amazing trip and I didn't do too badly with my "game plan".  I just underestimated how easily it was to be pleasantly side-tracked!  Next time, I'll make sure to add another day to my visit when the exhibition floor is open!